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How to Lash Maori Hook Necklace

About: Travelling since 2013. I'm currently in Australia for some reason. --- I’m Calvin Drews, and I love to learn, experiment, invent, create, repair, and generally just do things myself. A sort of modern jack o...
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I’ve posted an I’ble about how to make a Maori hook here. Now I’m posting a video about how to lash it to a necklace cord.

It was a very difficult lashing to figure out because there is really no info online about the subject (probably because it’s an incrediblely boring and obscure subject). I hope this video will help people who are into learning weird stuff.

Hei Matau
This is how I carve a traditional symbol called a Hei Matau (stylized fishing hook). A Hei Matau, also known as a hawaiian hook or a Maori hook is an ancient Polynesian symbol of strength, speed, and ability to provide. It's also fabled to protect people who are traveling over water.

This particular hook has a wooden shank and a bone barb. Usually hooks are made entirely out of bone or shell, but once in awhile you'd see a larger hook made like this. The polynesians did not really have access to large bones suitible for making large hooks, so they typically used stone, shells, or an inlaw's femur. Whalebone is brittle and difficult to carve, however is was usable after years of preparation.

The Hei Matau originated in Maori legend. Maori's are the original natives of New Zealand. The legend is that a man cought the north island of new zealand (which, at that time, was an enormous fish) with a hook he made out of his grandmothers jawbone (Maori's were never know to be very sentimental).

Obviously, since catching a fish the size of a habitable island is a pretty manly thing to do, this guy went down in history and was forgiven for carving his grandmother's JAW BONE into a fishing hook.

These hooks were originally carved by filing away at a bone with a piece of rough coral. Since this method takes pretty much 300 years to make a hook, I use a jewelers saw, bandsaw, sandpaper, and files.

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3 Discussions

hey dude somethings wrong. whenever i cloick on the link to how how to carve a maori hook penant all that come p is a plain white screen and in the bottom corner it sys its done loading or whatever. dont know whats up. maybe try making it again or maybe paste the link of te vid to this instructale. its awesome and stuff but the link dont work